


Duty, Honor, and Other Burdens

by t_stonehill



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Coming Out, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 13:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21320857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_stonehill/pseuds/t_stonehill
Summary: Returning to Garreg Mach for the first time after the start of the war stirs up old memories for Ingrid. Memories that she begins to see in a new light, triggering a crisis of faith and identity. Who has Ingrid been trying to be all these years? How does that contradict who she is now? And who will she become in the future? Her childhood friend Felix comes to find her in the ruined chapel, and listens as she talks out her tangled thoughts and feelings.Some ships are tangentially mentioned or implied, but I didn't want to tag them since they're not the focus of the fic and I didn't want to clog up tags. The parings implied/mentioned are: Ingrid/Dorothea, Ingrid/Leonie, Felix/Sylvain, Dorothea/Petra
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	Duty, Honor, and Other Burdens

Ingrid knelt in the hollowed-out ruins of the chapel of Garreg Mach, surrounded by the long-abandoned ghosts of happier times. She had hoped that by coming here for the five-year reunion she would be able to find some clarity and purpose in her life again. But as happy as she was to see the professor, to see everyone, again…

The monastery felt hostile where it had once been welcoming. Its halls had lain too long, empty and broken, and now any living thing within them felt out of place. All purpose, all meaning, all faith had been removed from its walls until all that was left was dead stone and cobwebs.

Even in the chapel itself, where Ingrid had once felt the awe of the divine and seen the righteousness of her path, felt empty.

_Goddess, please,_ she prayed. _Erase my thoughts and the memories that prompt them and the confusion that comes with them. Render me an empty vessel for your will, or the will of my king. Make me right again._

Ingrid heard the echo of footsteps behind her and turned around to see Felix, her childhood friend and almost brother-in-law, approaching through the darkness. He had changed little in the five years since the war had started, unlike Ingrid, who felt almost unrecognizable to herself.

“Are you here to yell at me for some reason?” Ingrid asked. “It’s the middle of the night, so I hope you’re not searching for a training partner.”

“Of course not,” said Felix, sitting on the floor next to her, his arms folded obstinately. “Sylvain wouldn’t stop whining about how he hadn’t seen you since dinner and how dangerous this place is so I said I would go check to make sure you weren’t buried under a collapsed wall somewhere.”

“You were worried about me?”

“I just wanted Sylvain to shut up.”

“Well, I’m clearly not dead, so you can go now.” Ingrid turned back to her prayer, but she didn’t hear any retreating footsteps. She opened her eyes. Felix was still sitting here.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Praying,” said Ingrid. “Thinking.”

“What are you thinking about?”

Ingrid eyed him warily.

Felix closed his eyes and made a _–tch _sound. “Just talk before I change my mind.”

Ingrid tried to think of where to start. “Do you remember, when I was little, how proud I was of my long hair?”

“Of course,” said Felix. “Sylvain used to say it looked like straw and then you would chase him around with a wooden sword. It was idiotic.”

“I just… I cut my hair shortly after the war started, because it felt more practical. I thought I was making a sacrifice. But... I like it more this way. Sometimes I feel like I want to cut it even shorter. And I feel guilty about it.”

“You feel guilty.”

“I feel bad for taking away something that little girl liked so much. And I wonder if she would resent me.”

“That’s stupid. And you’d feel less guilty if you hated your haircut?”

“It’s not just about the haircut, it’s…” Ingrid sighed. “When I was a kid, I had this whole vision for my future… I would grow up, I would marry Glenn, become a mother. I would live the same sort of life that my mother lived, and that my grandmother lived. But then Glenn died and I… replaced that imagined future with a new one, but my vision of it was just as strong. Carry on Glenn’s legacy. Become an honorable, devoted knight. Live my life according to the ideals of chivalry. And now…”

If Felix was surprised by this revelation of doubt, he didn’t show it. “You don’t want to be a knight anymore?”

“I still want to be a knight! I need to be a knight. I… I _have_ to be a knight. But what Lord am I supposed to devote my life to? Should I pledge myself to the mad, vengeance-blind Boar Prince, out of loyalty to my homeland? The Emperor who callously plunged the continent into war? The scheming head of the Alliance? Some minor noble or other who only cares about expanding his own land and influence?”

“Yes, those are your options,” said Felix. “Life isn’t like those silly legends you’re obsessed with, where Lords are just and noble and the villains are obvious and easily defeated.”

“They’re not always easily defeated! Those stories are about strength of conviction to do the impossible. My problem is my lack of conviction…”

“Like I said, easily defeated. Conviction? In real war, people die senselessly, no matter how strong their conviction.”

When Ingrid next spoke, her voice was small, like that little girl she both hated and envied was truly still inside her somewhere. “You mean Glenn.”

Felix didn’t answer.

Ingrid had to gather her resolve to dive this layer deeper. Her heart was pounding, and her self-preservation instinct screamed at her to keep this buried inside. But part of her wanted to reveal this ugliness. To have Felix judge her for it, the way she judged herself for it. “When Glenn died, I channeled my grief into resolve. The thought of him became my foundation. I was comforted by the image of his spirit guiding and supporting me. I felt like he had his hand on my shoulder, and that gave me the strength to walk forward. And now, more and more recently, I feel like he has his hands around my throat and I can’t move and I can’t breathe—” Ingrid choked up, and she had to take a moment to get herself back under control.

Ingrid had half expected Felix to have jumped on her and torn her to shreds for that, but he was still watching her, silently, straight-faced, waiting. She was forced to continue talking just to fill the unbearable emptiness between them. “All these years, when my father came to me with suitors, I was easily able to turn them all down using Glenn as an excuse. I didn’t think about it too much. I thought, if he had lived I most likely would have married him and loved him, but since he died, I would stay loyal to him by refusing to marry anyone else. I reasoned that marrying another man would be a betrayal. But now I think marrying another man would have been a much smaller betrayal than what I’m beginning to fear is the truth…”

“And what’s the truth?” asked Felix.

“… When I had long hair, people used to say I was pretty—”

“What the fuck, the hair again?” Felix raised his voice. “Who cares about your hair? Get to the point!”

“I can’t!” said Ingrid. “I can’t… say it just like that. I have to talk around it, build up to it. That’s the only way I’ve been able to even think about it. I had to find a roundabout way to get past the walls I’d built against it.”

Felix -_tch_’ed again and settled down. “Fine. Continue.”

“When I cut my hair, people stopped calling me pretty. But then I got these stupid hair ornaments—” Ingrid pulled them out of her hair and threw them on the ground. “And people started calling me pretty again. Like if I took away one decoration, I had to add another to make up for it. Once, when I wore makeup, Sylvain got so flustered he actually called me _beautiful_. And Dorothea was always trying to get me to wear makeup and… Anyway, it’s like I’m only ever praised when I’m trying to be girly, even though I’m no good at it. And everyone knows I’m no good at it. I can barely apply makeup. I have no eye for fashion. But when I try, they all praise me... out of pity, maybe, or like they’re training a clumsy dog to do a new trick. And every time they do it makes me happy. I think ‘finally, I’m doing it right,’ but deep down I know I’m still doing it wrong. I'm doing _being a woman_ wrong. I'm no good at being a woman and it makes me sick that I still feel like I’m forced to try. I hate looking at myself in the mirror. I feel ashamed when I don’t try to be pretty, and I feel even more ashamed when I do try, and I know I’m failing.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

“I told you, I have to circle around it.” Ingrid closed her eyes. “One day, Dorothea was trying to help me get dressed up for an event, and she kept sighing over how hopeless I was, but she also kept saying how _beautiful_ I was, and that she wanted to pounce on me, and she had this look in her eyes, and I got scared, and I yelled at her and pushed her away…"

Ingrid turned her face away from Felix. Even with her eyes closed, she couldn't face Felix when she said, "I think I was in love with Dorothea.”

The bandage torn off, Ingrid opened her eyes and nervously searched Felix’s face for any sing of reaction. It was dark, and his face was shadowed, but he seemed as blank-faced as ever. “You think?”

Ingrid was flustered. “Well, I don’t know, we always used to sort of jokingly flirt, I guess. Dorothea used to always call me, ‘my Ingrid,’ like I belonged to her, and I gave her a ring, like we were playing at being engaged. I know it sounds like I was a total idiot for not noticing, but at the time I wouldn’t let myself think about it. And now… something about this place stirred up the memories, and after all these years I finally saw saw it in a new light... But our friendship ended badly and now she’s on the opposite side of the war…”

“And what does any of this have to do with _Glenn_?” demanded Felix.

“It’s not just Dorothea, it’s that… before, I felt like, if Glenn had lived, then it was at least a possibility that I could have loved him and married him and now I’ve realized… I never could have been a wife to him. I the wrong kind of woman to be a wife, and anyway I can’t stand the thought of being with a man, I love… I love other women…”

Ingrid stared at Felix again, and once again his face is blank. “Why don’t you react to anything, damn it!” she shouted. “I just told you my darkest secret, you could at least have the decency to look surprised, or angry, or _anything_!”

“Oh, you’re done now?” asked Felix.

“Yes!”

“You want to hear what I think?”

“Yes! Yell at me! Condemn me in Glenn’s place! Call me stupid and confused and tell me to get back in my place!”

Felix shook his head. “Well, you _are_ stupid and confused, but not for the reasons you think.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ingrid, thrown off balance.

“You think you’re _honoring_ my brother by turning him into a vengeful ghost? You think your younger self would, what, _be sad_ about who you’ve become? Are _you_ sad about who you’ve become?”

“Yes!”

“Well, you shouldn’t be. And Glenn is _dead_. You can’t leave him at the altar. You don’t have to honor and obey him or whatever. He’s not here.”

“But if he was alive…”

“You can’t guess what he would have wanted if he was alive. If he had lived these past 14 years along with the rest of us, then he would have changed along with the rest of us. He’d be a completely different person by now, just like you are. You only see him as frozen in time _because_ he died. But you don’t have to stay frozen because _you’re not dead_. So don’t be feminine, love women, become a knight, or don’t. You don’t owe anything to imaginary phantoms you’ve invented to berate yourself with.”

“Okay, but what do I owe the living?” asked Ingrid. “If my father found out there’s no possibility that I’ll continue the family line…”

“You weren’t going to anyway,” said Felix.

“But duty and honor demand—”

Felix scoffed. “Who cares? You’re so insufferable. You tie yourself into knots overthinking everything until you invented problems out of nothing.”

“You don’t think the fact that I love women is a problem?”

“Not at all.” Felix glared into the distance for a moment before appearing to make up his mind. “I’ve been dating Sylvain since our school days.”

“You, _what!?_” Ingrid was genuinely shocked.

“It’s not like we’ve been hiding it, exactly. You’re just always too in your own head to notice your surroundings,” said Felix. “That’s why you always leave yourself vulnerable to attack on the battlefield.”

“But when did you get together? _How_ did you get together? Who confessed?”

Felix sighed. “I will not discuss it. Ask Sylvain if you want the inane details.”

“Wow,” said Ingrid. This conversation hadn’t gone the way she’d expected. Somehow, just saying it all out loud, she felt lighter somehow. And Felix, _Felix_ was being supportive. She was still all mixed up inside and she didn’t know if she’d ever find her way out of it entirely, but it didn’t feel like such an unbearable burden anymore.

Felix stood up and offered Ingrid her hand. “Come. We should both get some sleep so we can train more effectively tomorrow. Proper health is an important part of battle-readiness.”

Ingrid took his hand. “Why would you listen to me this long?” asked Ingrid. “You’re usually not very easy to talk to.”

They continued to speak as they made their way out of the dark chapel. “Like I said, you tend to get in your own head. We’re about to launch a campaign to end this war once and for all and we need every soldier we have. We can’t afford to have you distracted on the battlefield.”

“So you _were_ worried about me!” Ingrid pushed him lightly on the shoulder, and Felix looked away, blushing.

Felix mumbled, “Sylvain would never shut up about it if you got hurt and that would be super annoying so…”

Ingrid took a deep breath and released it, letting the tension flow out of her. “You _have_ changed over the past five years. A lot more than I thought you had.”

“Well. I’m not dead.”

“I still have no idea what my future will look like. It feels so strange and empty, after having been so certain for so long.”

“You can think about it again after the war. That’s the beauty of being alive. There’s always time to rethink things if it becomes necessary.”

“You must have had to rethink a lot of things to end up with _Sylvain_.”

Felix smiled. “I suppose so.”

They walked in silence for a moment.

“Hey, Felix?”

“What?”

“When I followed the strict code of a knight, I felt like I always knew if I was a good person or not, based on how well I was following the code. But now that… I don’t feel like I can do that anymore, how am I supposed to know what the right thing to do is? How am I supposed to know if I'm a good person?”

Felix shrugged. “You just have to follow your own beliefs. Do what you think is right.”

Ingrid sighed. “That sounds really hard.”

“Since when have you shied away from hard work?”

“Fair point… I guess I’d better get to work, then.” 

#

Another five years passed. The war ended, and everyone who lived moved on with their lives. Ingrid sat in a tavern, making her way through a bowl of stew. Her hair was cropped short, almost to the scalp, and she wore simple, travel-worn armor. No makeup, no jewelry, no ornamentation of any kind. The way she carried herself was comfortable and confident. She was reading a letter.

“Ingrid! That _is _you!”

Ingrid looked up to see Leonie, a huge grin on her face, taking a seat across the table. She had the exact same hairstyle now that Jeralt used to. Ingrid smiled. It was a little silly, but it suited her. She was also wearing a sleeveless leather shirt, which showed off her muscular arms. That also suited her very well. “Leonie, it’s good to see you,” she said.

Leonie reached across the table to clap her on the shoulder. “It’s so great that we can all be friends again, now that the war is over! Well, except for…”

_Except for the ones who died._ It was an unspoken rule among the alumni of Garreg Mach to not mention who had killed who in the war. It had been a chaotic time. It was no use holding grudges.

“Anyway!” continued Leonie. “What’s in that letter you’re holding that’s got you glaring so hard at it.”

“It’s an invitation to Dorothea and Petra’s wedding,” said Ingrid, handing it over to Leonie.

“No joke? That’s incredible!”

“I guess marriage between two women is legal in Brigid.”

“Well, Petra _is _the queen. If it wasn’t legal before I’m sure it’s legal now.”

“Good point,” admitted Ingrid.

“But why would such happy news make you glare like that? Or maybe it’s just really small print and you were squinting to read it?” Leonie moved the page closer and farther away from her face repeatedly like she was trying to determine the proper reading distance.

Ingrid let out a short, exasperated puff of air. “It just... brings up a lot of complicated old feelings, that’s all. I’m really, truly happy for them. But also, this confirms… something that I’d long been wondering about, and it makes me wonder if things could have been different if I’d…” Ingrid shook her head. “No, I tend to get lost in the past and get stuck going in circles. I’m trying to get better at moving on.”

“Hmm,” said Leonie. “I’m not sure exactly what you’re talking about, but it sounds heavy.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Anyway, what are you up to these days?” asked Leonie. Leonie had never been one to linger too long on one subject. “Did you manage to become a knight like you’d always wanted?”

Ingrid turned away to watch the flames dance in the hearth. “No… no, I wasn’t able to become a knight after all. It wasn’t for me.”

“Well that’s too bad. What are you doing instead?”

Ingrid shrugged. “Right now I’m just wandering. My father died last year. I declined to rule House Galatea, but I still received something of an inheritance. I thought I should probably see more of Fodlan before figuring out what to do with the rest of my life. So I’ve been using my inheritance to fund my travels.”

“That’s cool, where have you been so far?”

“A lot of small taverns identical to this one.”

Leonie laughed, a big strong belly laugh. It seemed Leonie’s big personality had only grown larger and more bombastic in the years since the war. Ingrid was happy to see it, and even more happy to be the one who had made her laugh.

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Leonie. “You may have heard already, but I started a mercenary company, so I’ve seen my fair share of small identical taverns.”

Ingrid shook her head. “They really start to blend together after a while.”

“True, true. Still, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but it seems like you might be a little lost in life at the moment.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” said Ingrid. “I do feel a bit directionless, but I also feel more stable in myself than I have… maybe ever.”

Leonie nodded. “I’m happy to hear that,” she said. She paused for a moment, staring intensely at Ingrid, looking her up and down. Ingrid blushed a little.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” Ingrid asked.

“I was just wondering are you still a deft hand with a lance. Been keeping up with your training since the war?”

“Of course.”

“Well, if you need a direction in life, how about joining my company? You know I’ve done so well for myself that they call me Blade Breaker now! They also call me Jeralt the Second. I think they mostly call me that to make fun of me, but joke’s on them, because I wear that badge with pride!” She laughed again.

Join a mercenary company? To become a mercenary... well, it was almost like being a knight, wasn't it? Except you didn't have to blindly follow the will of a Lord you couldn't be sure you'd always agree with. A mercenary was free to follow her own conscience. If a mercenary followed a code, it was a code of her own devising. Ingrid already had her next year of travelling planned out, almost down to the week, but… there was always time to rethink things. Ingrid smiled. “You know what? I think I think I _would_ like to join you. At least for now. I can see how I like it.”

“Fan-_tastic_!” said Leonie, slamming a hand on the table. “This is _such_ a great day. I’m so glad I ran into you. Want to buy me a round to celebrate, since you’ve got all that inheritance money?”

Ingrid laughed. “I’d love to.”

Ingrid was alive. The immediate future contained the prospect of getting dead drunk with an old friend. The far future contained infinite possibility. It’s not that everything was always great all the time, but Ingrid was… okay now. It felt good to be okay.

And Leonie _really_ looked good in that sleeveless leather shirt.


End file.
